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Why are there only 15 bathrooms for about 500,000 people who commute daily into Colombo, Sri Lanka’s commercial capital?
“Menstruating monthly is not an illness,” says Sumithra Randenigala, who works as a security guard in Sri Lanka’s largest city, Colombo. But when she has her monthly period, the 26-year-old often calls in sick to work.
Getting her pay docked some days each month is a better alternative than being unable to use the toilet during the two-hour daily train commute from her sleepy seaside town Bentota to Colombo Fort Station.
“If I need to change my pad, the toilet on the train is locked or blocked. At work, guards aren’t allowed to use the office toilet,” she tells me at the Sri Lanka Tea Board, where she works.
She attended school till age 14, where she learnt about urinary tract infections (UTIs) in class. She knows the importance of changing her sanitary pad frequently. After several painful experiences of contracting UTIs, she now chooses to forfeit her daily pay sometimes, rather than risk an infection that would force her to take a week of unpaid sick leave.
What are the options for Sumithra and others like her who come into Colombo daily to work?
Limited access to toilets affects women disproportionately. Women in the workforce are usually of reproductive age, needing to navigate monthly menstrual periods and/or pregnancies during these years. The paucity of toilets in Colombo reflects a planning process did not take women’s needs into consideration.
This lack of a gender-inclusive approach in urban planning forces women to devise workarounds during their commute and workday. Iromi Perera and Meghal Perera at the Colombo Urban Lab point out that, due to the gendered impacts of heat stress, women may drink less water or take time off work to go home or somewhere close by to use the bathroom.”
The United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) 2020 report estimated Colombo’s population at more than 612,000 and a daily floating population of about 500,000 workers. Compared to the rest of the country with an average population density of 325 persons per kilometre, Colombo is densely populated with just over 13,000 persons per kilometre.
How many public toilets does Colombo have? Who decides how many toilets Colombo needs, and where they should be located? The Colombo Municipal Council (CMC) and the Urban Development Authority (UDA) are both involved, resulting in no single organization being accountable for progress or lack thereof.
Colombo has 15 working toilets for its commuter population of approximately 500,000, according to the Global Public Toilet Index which looks at how many restrooms are available for each 100,000 people in a city. Colombo has about three per 100,000 persons. By comparison, Chiang Mai, Thailand, has about 92 public toilets per 100,000 persons, making it the “global capital of public toilet access.”
“Colombo’s 15 public toilets haven’t been upgraded since 2019,” Mayor Vraie Cally Balthazaar tells me in her office in the iconic Town Hall, a building inspired by Washington DC’s Capitol.
Balthazaar, Colombo’s second female mayor, aims to improve these inadequate facilities during the remaining three years of her four-year term.
The UDA refers me to its City of Colombo Development Plan (2022–2031) detailing Colombo’s current urban spatial condition, with streetscapes and promenades to be introduced. The plan “aims to improve the quality of public realm” and the streetscape, “offering a safe and convenient sidewalk for pedestrians.”
The 462-page report makes no mention of public toilets.
Colombo’s development towards becoming a megapolis continues apace. Steel skyscrapers shimmer as they catch the rays of the setting sun over Port City’s new marina, built on reclaimed land. Luxury condominiums tower over the city’s colonial-era Fort, slated for urban regeneration.
Once lauded as the Garden City of the East, Colombo now needs to urgently improve access to public toilets.
After being elected in September 2024, President Anura Kumara Dissanayake launched the Clean Sri Lanka project aiming to upgrade sanitary facilities nationwide utilizing existing petrol stations to install 1,500 new toilets.
Who pays for these toilets? Currently the Clean Sri Lanka project is funded by both the government and corporate sponsors. A new model under discussion suggests mixed developments where a shopfront’s income is used to maintain the toilet blocks.
The Clean Sri Lanka project’s implementation in greater Colombo and surrounding Western Province towns is managed by Hanif Yusoof, Governor of the Western Province. He tells Global Southasia that work is “ongoing”, and that the UDA is currently overseeing toilet construction.
He says they have conducted in-depth research to identify key sites now earmarked for toilets near the Mount Lavinia Railway Station and the Pettah Central Bus Station, “both of which have a high commuter footfall.”
P. Samanthi Mudiyanselage Hema, 40, works for Abans, a large conglomerate to which the CMC has subcontracted street cleaning services. If she doesn’t get to the maduwa (work tent) by 6 am, she’s not guaranteed work that day. She receives 800 rupees (USD 2.43) for working eight hours daily.
The maduwa toilets are restricted to office workers, and the public toilet is a twenty-minute walk away.
“I don’t drink water while I’m sweeping,” Samanthi says. “Then I don’t need to look for a toilet.”
When temperatures soar, she cannot always hold out, then must pay to use the facilities at a nearby shop.
“I have no issues,” says Kithsiri Devaka, her 58-year-old male co-worker, when asked the same questions about where he uses a bathroom. “I manage,” he adds, smiling.
Kaushika de Alwis, 32, works as a cashier at Colombo’s new Port City Mall. She commutes from her town Moratuwa, about 90 minutes away by bus. Unlike the security guard Sumithra, she is allowed to use the bathrooms at work.
But on the days she has her period, she takes a taxi instead, as there are no toilets in the bus or the bus station. The additional expense takes up 25% of her daily wage.
From my home in Colombo 6, it is a 17-minute walk to the nearest public toilet, which costs twenty rupees to enter. I join a line of women, some carrying babies. It takes about ten minutes to gain access to a cubicle. It is well lit and sparkling clean.
Clearly, the toilets in our aspirational metropolis are usable and well maintained. There just need to be at least ten times as many of them. Even with 30 toilets per 100,000 commuters, Colombo would still have only a third of Chiang Mai’s rate.
If either the CMC or the UDA had a clear mandate to construct and manage public toilets, urban planners and activists could then hold that institution accountable.
“What a blessing it would be if all train stations had toilets for us to use,” muses Sumithra, preparing to board her southbound train.
The writer of this article, Nadia John Nagpal is an A Level student in Colombo, Sri Lanka. She was a quarter finalist in the first ever Politic High School Essay Competition. She believes ‘History’ should equally be ‘Herstory’, loves to travel anywhere there’s a beach and spends weekends comparing the ceremonial grade of matcha across Colombo’s cafes.
This is a Global Southasia (formerly Sapan News) syndicated feature available for republication with due credit to sapannews.com. This article was written and edited by humans. Click here for the Global Southasia AI policy.
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(Excerpts from the inaugural SAU-RCSS lecture delivered at the Regional Centre for Strategic Studies, Colombo, on 26 October 2026)
South Asia has the markets, the people and the geography to become a thriving economic space. Yet political rivalry, mistrust and protectionism continue to prevent its countries from turning proximity into prosperity. Gradually. but inevitably, the region has ‘normalised’ non-cooperation.
There is a peculiar paradox at the heart of South Asia. It is one of the world’s most densely populated regions, with enormous markets, young populations (a median age of 27.8 years), rapidly growing economies, extraordinary cultural connections and some of the world’s busiest trading routes. Its countries share borders, economic spaces and the Indian Ocean. Yet, economically, South Asia behaves as though its countries are separated by unforgiving chasms and oceans.
The numbers tell a dispiriting story of a region that trades far too little with itself. Intra-regional trade reportedly accounts for only about 5% of South Asia’s total trade, compared with around 25% in ASEAN and 16% in Africa. The World Bank estimates that South Asian countries trade approximately $23bn with one another, against an estimated potential of at least $67bn. The annual gap of roughly $44bn represents not merely a statistical shortfall, but businesses that never emerge, factories that are never built, supply chains that develop elsewhere and employment opportunities that never materialise.
The same research makes an astounding observation: for an Indian company, trading with Brazil can be about 20% cheaper than trading with a neighbouring South Asian country. Brazil is thousands of kilometres away; most South Asian countries are next door. Yet the economic systems of South Asia have made geographical proximity an obstacle rather than an advantage.
The problem, therefore, is not a lack of economic potential. It is the failure to turn proximity into prosperity. This brings us to the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC), established in Dhaka in 1985, with the ambitious objective of accelerating the region’s economic and social development. More than four decades later, SAARC has produced declarations, conventions, committees, programmes and agreements. But its overall economic promise remains largely unrealised.
Why has South Asia found regional cooperation so much harder than other regions? How did ASEAN, and even Africa, despite their greater diversity, develop habits of cooperation despite political differences? And how did Europe turn economic interdependence into an ambitious regional project leading to eventual political union?
Above all, why can the political disputes between two countries repeatedly paralyse an organisation representing eight? The answer is not one country’s fault. But neither is responsibility evenly distributed.
A regional institution held hostage?
SAARC has accomplished some useful work. Its members established the South Asian Preferential Trading Arrangement (SAPTA) and subsequently the South Asian Free Trade Area (SAFTA). Agreements covering services, investment and social cooperation followed. The SAARC Development Fund, established in 2010, has approved more than 90 projects across member states. There have been sector-specific achievements and useful institutional building blocks.
But the larger question is whether these initiatives have transformed South Asia’s economic relationships. The answer is much less encouraging. SAARC has produced paperwork on institutions, but not economic cooperation on the scale originally imagined. SAFTA has yet to make any significant impact on intra-regional trade.
The comparison with ASEAN is particularly revealing. ASEAN is no European Union. Its members have different and even diverging political systems, competing strategic interests and territorial disputes. They have even engaged in combat as recently as a few months ago. Yet they have developed mechanisms to cooperate without first resolving every disagreement.
South Asia has too often done the opposite: a bilateral dispute becomes a regional dispute, and a regional meeting becomes hostage to bilateral tensions. Economic initiatives become entangled in security perceptions and in allegations, both well-founded and ill-founded.
Europe and Africa offer another lesson. Their integration projects emerged from particular historical experiences, and South Asia may not be able simply to reproduce those projects. But their founding logic remains relevant: economic interdependence and cooperation have incrementally led to political harmony and even ‘union’. Such harmony and union reinforce security by making conflict increasingly costly.
South Asia is still struggling to comprehend that logic, let alone embrace it. Here, politics continues to constrain economics, most conspicuously in the relationship between India and Pakistan.
Many argue that this rivalry is the central obstacle to SAARC’s progress. The two countries are not simply members of the organisation; they are its dominant powers and are nuclear-armed. Their disagreements have consequences for every other member. A former senior SAARC official himself described the organisation as “moribund” in 2003, citing mutual suspicion and conflict. That diagnosis remains pertinent.
Yet blaming everything on one issue involving two countries would be too easy. Pakistan’s resistance to certain forms of regional integration that recognise Indian predominance has impeded progress, as has Indian resistance to Pakistani demands for sovereign equality. Related security concerns and an inability to separate economic normalisation from political disputes have undoubtedly impeded progress too. But India’s own diplomatic establishment has also questioned whether New Delhi has done enough to make regional cooperation work.
India’s influence entails responsibility
India is overwhelmingly the largest country in South Asia by population, territory, economic weight and military power. Its influence is indispensable to regional integration. But asymmetric influence entails commensurate responsibility as well.
A former Indian foreign secretary criticised India’s insufficient investment in regional infrastructure and inadequate provision of market access to smaller neighbours. He warned against being “too much calculative on short-term costs”. He argued that regional cooperation could not succeed if the larger neighbour failed to bring smaller countries along.
This is an important corrective to the tendency to view SAARC’s predicament principally through the India-Pakistan prism.
India claims deep-seated security issues and concerns relating to Pakistan. But regional integration cannot be built solely on strict reciprocity. The largest economy often has to accept disproportionate initial costs to create a system from which the region, as a whole, can benefit. India gains from regional stability, connected markets and prosperous neighbours. Better connectivity through Bangladesh can improve access for India’s northeastern states. Regional energy trade can benefit all participants. Neighbours that prosper become larger markets for Indian businesses.
Infrastructure investment and market concessions should, therefore, be viewed not simply as short-term costs, but as strategic investments in a larger regional economic system.
India’s size also creates anxieties among its smaller neighbours. Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan, Sri Lanka and the Maldives see enormous opportunities in access to the Indian market. But they also have understandable concerns that economic dependence could erode their sovereign and strategic autonomy, and that asymmetry could become political leverage. They want trade with India, but they also want to retain their economic and strategic autonomy in public policymaking.
Successful regionalism requires confidence that the largest member will exercise its power predictably and legally. India’s leadership will be judged not merely by the scale of its ambitions, but by whether its neighbours see those ambitions as an opportunity rather than a threat.
South Asia should welcome and support India’s rise. But India’s aspirations to global leadership cannot be entirely separated from the condition of its neighbourhood. A leading power must be prepared to shoulder the responsibilities that accompany its influence.
Pakistan must change its calculation too
The same principle applies to Pakistan. It cannot advocate for stronger regional economic cooperation while keeping its economic relationship with India hostage to every political crisis. Its security concerns and disputes with India are real. But so are the economic costs of isolation.
Geography suggests that the two countries should trade extensively with each other. Instead, goods travel along longer routes, businesses seek alternative suppliers, consumers pay more and investment opportunities disappear. Pakistan could potentially become an important transit economy connecting South Asia with Afghanistan and Central Asia, but that opportunity depends partly on regional connectivity.
The question is not whether India and Pakistan can resolve every political dispute. It is whether they must resolve every dispute before they can cooperate economically. There is a difference between resolving a dispute and managing a relationship.
ASEAN provides sophisticated templates for doing that. Regional cooperation need not require agreement on Kashmir or the abandonment of legitimate security concerns. It requires recognising that not every economic question must become an extension of political conflict.
The United States and China continue to trade despite profound strategic rivalry. ASEAN and African Union members cooperate despite serious unresolved differences. Political disagreement and economic cooperation need not always be mutually exclusive. South Asia has yet to make that distillation intelligently.
(H.M.G.S. Palihakkara is a former Secretary to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Sri Lanka.)
Continue Reading Features Brazil, Israel, Serbia Election Fallouts and Selection Politics at the UN Published
The recent elections in Brazil, Serbia and Isreal, with the mother of all elections – the US midterm elections during a Trump presidency – due next Tuesday, are symptomatic of both national choices as well as their global constraints and implications. In addition, the selection of the next UN Secretary General has taken a new turn in New York, further underscoring the shifting sands of geopolitics. In the era of Trump there is only room for cynical transactionalism and dystopic dysfunctionality. Sweeping revolutionary optimism or the mendicant grandeur of non-alignment have turned out to be 20 th century ephemerals. There is no credible champion for them in the 21 st century.
Even though Trump’s executive powers may become increasingly checked by a new Congress under Democrats’ control after the midterm elections and will be terminated by the end of his presidency in January 2029, the havocs that he has whipped up will ripple through many polities and economies for much longer. There is really nothing that any Sri Lankan government can do to influence geopolitical currents even close its territorial waters. The global context and Sri Lanka’s situation are not conducive to pulling a foreign policy diversion to escape domestic crises.
The task for the NPP government is to navigate through a cynically transactional world and address Sri Lanka’s old and new problems. The NPP’s detractors are literally left, right and centre. All of them keep hammering it for betraying its socialist pre-history and for taking the IMF road to economic stability. They accuse the NPP for both abandoning the path of state-corporation socialism at home and non-alignment abroad. They blame it for being too pliant in foreign policy while insisting that our export and job markets overseas are protected by any and all means.
The saving grace for the government is that its main detractors and opposition parties have not been able to land a single palpable blow to hurt the government. It is the government that has been hurting itself by self-inflicted body blows. The government must save itself from its own goals and prioritize the task that it must fulfill before the next elections. A pertinent question would be which elections and when – provincial, parliamentary or even presidential? As for challenges – there is El Niño, either turning up the heat or turning on the tap; there is energy and electricity; there is education; and most of all the livelihood of with people having to live with diminishing incomes and rising prices.
Donald Trump has been looming large over the presidential election in Brazil. Trump’s right wing pals in Latin America have been winning a string of presidential elections – seven in one year. Brazil would have been the eighth. But incumbent President Lula da Silva pulled off a stunning come-from-behind victory to keep Brazil leaning Left. Brazil and Mexico are the only large countries with non-Trump presidencies in Latin America. The pendulum will of course swing back, but leaders of the left and centre-left parties will have redraw their roadmaps to facilitate the swing.
Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio revealed their design for Latin America when they allowed the defeated candidate Flavio Bolsanaro to enter the US with his family on a special US visa after fleeing Brazil via Argentina and Ecuador. He fled to escape investigations for corruption, money laundering and tax evasion. He is now in Florida where the majority of Brazilian Americans, including his younger brother, live. His father, former President Jair Bolsonaro, is serving a 27-year jail term in Brazil after being convicted on charges corruption and for attempting to overturn the results of the 2022 presidential that he lost to Lula da Silva.
Flavio Bolsanaro is a Brazilian Senator and as presidential candidate this year secured the largest number of votes in the first round raising hopes of another right wing turn in Brazil. But in the second round runoff Lula da Silva turned the tables on his opponent with a vigorous campaign and strong voter mobilization, capturing 52% of the vote and polling four million votes than his opponent and more than what he polled in 2022. This would be da Silva’s fourth term (after two terms from 2003 to 2011, and the current term since 2023) as President and it may very well be more challenging than the previous three.
At 81, da Silva needs to find a competent successor to lead a highly divided country. The north voted mostly for Lula da Silva while the south sided with Bolsanaro. While his supporters have been uproarious in their celebrations, the markets have not been kind to da Silva’s victory. They reversed their rally after Bolsonaro’s first round victory. The attention is now on the selection of the new cabinet and the next Finance Minister in particular – to calm the markets and reassure investor confidence. The re-elected president can also expect long distance meddling from Washington that could get worse after next week’s midterm elections before it tapers off.
Unlike in Brazil, the Serbian elections were not under any American shadow. Yet the elections delivered a political earthquake. Serbian students who have been protesting a while longer than their counterparts in Europe and in India, contested Serbia’s parliamentary elections under the Student List banner and spectacularly defeated the Serbian Progressive Party (SNS) of President Aleksander Vucic and ended their 14-year hold on power. The Student List candidates, largely unknown and a rather motley collection of academics, actors and famers, won 140 out 250 seats in the Serbian parliament.
The student protest that culminated in the election shocker had begun two years ago after a railway station canopy in the city of Novi Sad collapsed and killed 16 train patrons. The canopy failure became a flashpoint for manifesting anger over corruption, cronyism and growing authoritarianism of the Vucic government. After staving off protests for two years, Vucic suddenly called a snap parliamentary election. He resigned as President and contested the parliamentary election hoping to be Prime Minister. His defeat now is comparable to the defeat of Viktor Orban in Hungary in May this year.
Aleksander Vucic has been a central figure in the building of post-Yugoslavian Serbia. He became the Minister of Information at age of 28, and already showed signs of a controlling disposition by restricting journalists and banning TV networks. He wielded power even before becoming Prime Minister in 2014 at 34 years of age. He was elected President in 2017. While criticized for his authoritarianism, Vucic is also credited for his economic stewardship fostering growth and diversification, based on a triangular foreign policy approach – simultaneously engaging the EU for trade and membership; China for investment, and Russia for natural gas and political reinforcement.
As for the victorious student movement, hard works awaits them after the euphoria of victory. Their nominal leader is Ilija Srdanovic, a Cardiologist and university Professor, but it is not clear whether he or someone else will head the new government as Prime Minister. He is from the city of Novi Sad where the protests began and has been a leading spokesperson for the student movement from the beginning. He advocates universal healthcare and considers Serbia’s “existential survival’ and not EU membership should be the priority for the Student List. The electoral agenda of the Student List has focused on eradicating graft and improving the school system.
Education has become the central theme in all the protests crisscrossing Europe. The ultimate political victory of the Student List in Serbia will have a range of demonstration effects in France, Italy, Spain and Albania among others. Spain will have a snap election in late November. It was called after student protests against affordable housing shortage. It has since been joined by protests over high speed rail crashes – partially attributed to introducing private trains to share with public train service the national pride of high speed rail roads that are newly built and are more extensive on a per capita basis than China. What forms protests and fallouts will take in other countries is too early to predict.
In Israel, Prime Minister Netanyahu has been badly bruised but not totally defeated. Netanyahu’s ultra-right coalition has been denied its majority (61 out of 120 seats) in the Knesset, but Likud Party is projected to hold the largest number of seats – 27 seats, five fewer than now48. The final tally is 53 seats for Netanyahu’s ultra right coalition – down from 68 in the outgoing parliament, and 48 seats for the centre-right and left opposition parties. There is no Left of consequence left in Israel. The entire country has moved to the right on national security and Palestinian statehood. A consequence of the October 2023 Hamas attack.
The surprise of the Israeli elections is the capture of 19 seats by the Israeli Palestinian parties, up from 10 seats – the more the larger Joint List group capturing 11 seats and the left-leaning Ra’am or the United Arab List group winning eight seats. The two Arab Parties are willing to join or support the opposition group to form the next government and prevent Netanyahu from becoming Prime Minister again. But there is fierce resistance within the opposition group to have any truck with the two Palestinian parties, which is reflective of the hostile sentiment among most of the Jews.
Netanyahu has already condemned any coalition with the Palestinians as treasonous, and has also accused the Palestinian parties of getting foreign funding support, apparently from Qatar. This is peeling a page straight off the Trump playbook but it may be more fruitful in Israel than in the US. Qatar and the Palestinians have vehemently denied the allegations. Trump who endorsed Netanyahu before the elections has since indicated his opposition to Netanyahu keeping the two ultra right parties in a new government. Netanyahu will likely ignore Trump on this, but he may not be able poach anyone from the opposition to join a new government without jettisoning the extremists. He will likely push for a ‘national government including the opposition, but without the two Palestinian parties and the two ultraright Jewish parties.
At the UN, the search for a new Secretary General to replace outgoing Antonio Guttress has become overtly political. Thanks to the Trump Administration getting interested having its say in the matter and breaking with the past tradition of quiet diplomacy. Brushing aside the compact of regional rotation and the desire for having the first female SG at the UN, the US publicly vetoed all the seven declared candidates, including the two leading candidates – both women and from the Latin American – Caribbean Region: former Costa Rican Vice President Rebecca Grynspan, and former Guyanese Foreign Minister Carolyn Rodriguess-Birket.
Then Trump proposed three names – two outlandish: the controversial FIFA President Gianni Infantino, and former H PM Viktor Orbán; and one self-serving: Bulgarian diplomat Nickolay Mladenov, who is also the head of the Trump-created Board of Peace for Gaza. He proposed Orbán as a joint American, Russian and Chinese candidate, with the apparent concurrence of both Russia and China. But Britain and France quietly demurred. That was the end of it and the start of a very public stalemate.
Now the United Arab Emirates (UAE) has stepped in to break the stalemate and capture the Secretary General seat at the UN. The UAE government has nominated its veteran diplomat Lana Zaki Nusseibeh as a new candidate with the consent of all five Permanent Members of the Security Council, against the wishes of the Latin American countries.
Lana Nusseibeh’s credentials are not in question. An experienced diplomat, fluent in Arabic, English, French and Hebrew, she could be the first woman UN Secretary General. At 48, and she is younger than either Rebecca Grynspan (70) and Carolyn Rodriguess-Birkett (53), and would be the second youngest SG in UN’s 81 year history. Ms. Nusseibeh is also Palestinian and a descendent of the notable Nusseibeh family of Jerusalem. Her father was born in 1946, in Jerusalem in the then British Mandatory Palestine.
All the Gulf States and the Palestinian government support her candidacy and that enhances her credibility as a potential bridge builder for peace in the Middle East. She has been both credited for facilitating relief operations in Gaza, as well as criticized for being closer to the Israeli government than suggested by official assertions to the contrary. Lanna Nusseibeh has now become the leading candidate with growing support. She is presenting herself as a generational change candidate with experience in facilitating consensus between conflicting parties, and promising “to pursue relentless diplomacy, strengthen global trust and address worsening conflicts, warning that the failure of international institutions to act carries an unacceptable human cost.”
The problem with her candidacy is the human rights record of the government she represents – both at home and abroad, especially in Sudan. Sudanese diplomats and human rights activists are outraged at her candidacy, and have accused her of being the “public face of the UAE’s denials that it was arming the murderous Rapid Support Forces” – RSF in Sudan. Yale University’s Nathaniel Raymond has described the Nusseibeh candidacy as representing “the capture of the UN by the UAE” and “a doubling down by the US and Britain in their Emirati relationship above international law.” It is not just Britain and the US, but practically every western country, all G7 members, as well as Russia and China who value their own Emirati relationship and are ready to support the UAE candidate for the highest office at the UN.
Continue Reading Features Starting life again Published
I took my final BA examination in December 1972, and left Peradeniya on the eve of 1973 with my friends. We were happy to go home after the hectic examination schedule. We left the University with good memories of the most enjoyable times in our lives. Through autograph albums, many exchanged their memories as if they wanted to preserve them forever. From bookshops in Kandy, students bought dozens of such albums.
Some were expensive, with silk cloth covers and scented papers with beautiful art on each page. I wanted to be different. I cut an exercise book in half and stapled the two halves together to make my autograph album. A young artist drew a lovely abstract design on the cover page. I wrote a poem in Sinhala on the first page, and I still remember its first stanza:
Will that paradise ever find us again?
Women friends wrote more poignant poems. A close friend wrote: “No wish of yours should ever become only a dream.” Another wrote: “Although the spring [you have referred to] may never return, it has opened a door to find charming qualities of a loving heart.”
I made about 100 entries in my album with amusing short notes and poems. My 80-page autograph book was full by the time I left the campus. A friend became well known for the poetry he wrote on women’s autographs. He began each poem with the word ‘dahasak ’ (thousand). Women called him ‘ dahasak Kumara ’.
On December 31, 1972, the university-leaving students got into the train that departed from Sarasavi Uyana (University Park) railway station at 6:30 am. We bid farewell to the University as the university slowly disappeared behind the hills. Suddenly, we all felt sad, vulnerable, and aimless. The train stopped at three or four major railway stations on the way down to Colombo. At each station, a few friends got down with their belongings. They waited on the platform waving at us. I sadly watched them as if I would never see them again.
I came home by bus from Colombo and felt like a stranger. I forgot where the well and toilet were. The only cupboard in the front room was full of clothes and electrical items. I emptied my suitcase and placed my few items of clothing in the closet. On the train, a friend gave me a pillow to take home, with a few drops of fresh tears on the pillowcase. She told me to visit her at her home in Gampaha to return the pillow, if I wanted.
The anxiety, loneliness, and aimlessness overpowered me. I felt I hadn’t used all the opportunities the University and its vibrant community offered me during those four years. I was sad not to have a committed relationship with a female student. I realized I now had to restart my whole life alone from an unknown point.
I told my mother that I had completed my studies at Peradeniya. She was happy to have me at home after four years. She hinted that I should get ready to look for possible brides with the assistance and advice of Eusabius Uncle. She wanted to know whether I had a girlfriend at the University. When I told her I wanted to wait a while before thinking about marriage, she laughed. She was happy and relieved to guess that I had remained uncommitted to any woman.
On the second day back home, two friends visited me. They confessed they felt lonely and missed their girlfriends. One of them suggested visiting a few friends in Gampaha. I agreed happily, as the woman who gave me a pillow was from Gampaha. I told my mother that I was going with my friends to visit some other university friends. When she saw the pillow in my hand, she wanted to know why I had brought a pillow that belonged to a woman. I tried to convince her I had picked up the pillow by mistake. She didn’t believe me, but she smiled.
Our friends in Gampaha were first shocked and then elated to see us. They looked tired and heavy-hearted. Their usual enthusiasm for chatting, sharing jokes, and gossip seemed to have already waned. One complained about her mother, who had begun to control her visits to relatives and friends. I returned the pillow to my friend at her home. She told me her trick had worked—to bring me to her. Her mother, a kind-hearted woman in her 50s, was a schoolteacher. Her husband died many years ago, and she raised my friend and her sister with her meager salary.
We had ‘high tea’ at my friend’s place. She served us hot kavum, welithalapa, and fish cutlets with ginger tea. Her mother too invited me to visit them again. I felt happy, and we all talked about our memories at Peradeniya. On my way back home, I thought about my life and who I was going to share it with. No specific person came to my mind.
Two days later, I received a letter from the Central Bank asking me to come for a job interview, based on my GCE (Ordinary Level) results, which I passed in 1965. The job offered a monthly salary higher than what Eusabius Uncle gave us.
I visited Eusebius Uncle and told him that I had completed my undergraduate studies. I thanked him for his support, kindness, and love. I told him about the job at the Central Bank. He had tears in his eyes, and I do not know why he cried – perhaps he was happy to see that our family was nearing a better phase in life.
My mother cooked kiribath for breakfast the day I first went to the Central Bank. At the Bank, I was assigned to the Audit Department. The Director of the Department called me to his office and asked me about my school, the subjects I had studied at the University, and about my parents. I told him that I had just sat for a BA in Sociology degree at Peradeniya and was waiting for the results. He looked at me and said, “You will leave us when the results are out. But you can apply for a staff position at the Bank.”
Then, a ‘tea boy’ brought tea. I hesitated to stay in his big room to drink tea with him. But he told me to sit down and enjoy a good cup of tea. After tea, he told me to visit the Public Debt Department. He said that the Department needed someone who could read tender applications and sinking fund-related documents in English. I felt happy because of his kindness and encouragement.
I met the Director of the Department of Public Debt in his office. He was an intelligent, dashing, handsome man in his late fifties. He welcomed me, and after a brief conversation, he instructed me to go to Mr. Perera’s Audit Unit in the middle of the floor. Mr. Perera had two assistants, and I was the third in his Unit. Perera was an unassuming man, about to retire from the Bank after 35 years of service. He too asked me about my family, education, and plans.
He was delighted to know I was originally from Paiyagala, where he lived. He knew my grandmother and Antoney Mama. The senior Assistant at the Unit was a Tamil man who looked distressed and unhappy. He gave me a purple ink pen and told me that internal auditors use purple pens to write on documents, especially to highlight issues for discussion. I almost told him that I was colorblind, but I didn’t because I didn’t know how he would respond.
He did not waste time talking to me. He took out five fat files from a steel cabinet and asked me to study them thoroughly. I had to ‘audit’ reports and send memos to the Public Debt Department through the Senior Assistant and Mr. Perera. I felt proud to examine official documents and write short memos for my boss’s review.
The second Assistant was a jovial fellow with plenty of gossip to share with his boss. He took me to the Central Bank’s cafeteria for lunch and introduced me to his friends. One of his friends was one of my father’s students . The cafeteria reminded me of the dining room at Marcus Fernando Hall. I suddenly started missing the University.
In the afternoon, I received a rude telephone call from a man called Christie. He introduced himself as the President of the Bank’s trade union. He said that he had expected a before-lunch courtesy call from me. I apologized and asked him whether I should visit him right away. He sternly said, ‘Yes. ‘
Christie wore the national dress – a long white top and a white sarong, accompanied by a pair of old leather sandals. His shirt was dirty and crumpled, his long hair unkempt, and because of his blue eyes I thought he was a Burgher. I knew he was a Christian because of his name – Christie. He told me that many brash fellows like me joined the Bank and had to leave because they did not learn the ‘survival culture’ there. I thought it was a threat.
When I tried to talk to him, he told me, “You listen to me first.” He advised me to join the Union. The parting shot was that I should ‘faithfully’ do overtime every weekend. He said that unless I worked 20 hours during each weekend, others in my Unit could not justify their overtime claims.
From my boss, I learned how to write ‘effective’ memos. He advised me to discuss the draft memo with the recipient before sending it, especially if the recipient is a senior official, because I should not ‘shock’ or ‘challenge’ anyone with memos. Reading files on sinking funds, debentures, and stock and share documents helped me broaden my knowledge of economics.
On Christie’s advice, I clocked twenty hours of overtime every weekend. The extra payment was reasonable. I enjoyed working with colleagues in an informal weekend atmosphere. We dressed casually and brought sweets from home to share. We took a two-hour lunch break instead of a one-hour break on weekends. A senior clerk bought several kilograms of tempered dhal from a shop near St. Anthony’s Church at Kochchikade and sold small parcels to overtime workers at the bank, keeping a small profit for himself. He did not do any office work as he was busy with dhal business.
At the end of January, I received my first salary. I left the bank and had lunch alone at a restaurant for the first time. When I returned to my desk, my boss asked me to come out into the corridor and told me, “Please give me hundred rupees on loan. I will return your money at the end of next month.” I told him, “If I give you Rs 100, then I will take home less than Rs. 200. That was not enough for five members of my family to live a month.”
He smiled with guilt. Then he demanded Rs. 100 again, and I immediately handed him ten 10-rupee notes. I couldn’t do any work that afternoon. I told my mother what had happened to me at the bank. She consoled me by saying the boss would surely return the money. He returned the loan after two months.
In my semi-annual performance assessment at the Bank, conducted in July, the Bank awarded me an A+ (“Excellent, outstanding record”). The award generated more animosity than recognition for me at the Bank. The two staff assistants in our Unit received the grade ‘B’ (Satisfactory). They were unhappy to see A+ on my report.
I expected to return to Peradeniya as a temporary assistant lecturer before August. Usually, the Sociology Department called one or two students who had done well in the final examination as temporary assistant lecturers. But the Department did not call anyone in 1973 to join the staff. I learned that the Department had been changing because of infighting among teachers. I heard that a lecturer had reduced marks offered by another lecturer. The latter told a student that her initial marks were sufficient to earn a First Class. But in the end, she got a Second Class (Lower Division) degree.
After the results were out, my principal teacher told me he had given me an ‘A’ for my general essay on the role of gossip and rumors as a form of social control. He hinted that I deserved a First. But he didn’t elaborate. Several years later, at the Department, I saw a copy of my results sheet. In three subjects, my scores were borderline. Scores from 67 to 69 were ‘borderline,’ and the Department could have upgraded the result to 70 (‘A’). If it did, I could have got a First as the upgrade of scores would have given me four ‘A’s, qualifying me for a First.
By the end of July 1973, I visited Peradeniya to meet my principal teacher. He explained to me that the Department was not a good place for a young man to join as an assistant lecturer. One lecturer in the Department was undermining the academic culture established by well-known scholars such as Bryce Ryan, Obeysekere, and Thambiah. He told me that he returned to Peradeniya after spending several years at Oxford University as one of its Rhodes Scholars to establish himself as a pioneer teacher who could teach in Sinhala and English.
He could have stayed in the UK and would have easily gotten a university teaching position. Several teachers had already left the Department because they could not withstand the political harassment and vicious slander of the nasty lecturer. Political connections became the primary criterion for appointing some lecturers.
The failed insurrection justified appointing loyal ruling party members as lecturers. My teacher told me he planned to migrate to New Zealand. I told him I had studied hard and hoped to join the University as a lecturer and that I was losing that chance. He sympathized with me and encouraged me to apply for Master’s scholarships in the UK and Australia so that I could join the Department later.
On my way home from the University, I thought about my future. The Central Bank was the only place where I could try to get a staff position. The shock and unhappiness I felt during the visit took several weeks to fade. A few days later, I met the Director of the Department of Statistics at the Bank, who had taught me Statistics. We discussed my plans. He encouraged me to apply for a staff position at the Bank when the BA results are known, and agreed to be a referee.
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